Well, all I can say is, those are the UGLIEST boots I have ever seen, especially on Royalty. Princess Michael does have on a nice, conservative outfit but she definitely does not know how to pick out shoes to match. Totally OUT of sync.

What do you think of this outfit by Princess Michael of Kent at the opening of a museum in London? I have been reading a lot of comments on other message boards about her dress looking a bit like pajamas.

Myself, I like the colour of the dress but I can&#39;t say that I much care for the design. Princess Michael has a pretty trim figure, and shouldn&#39;t cover it up with a straight sheath dress like this. (Not that I want her to be dressing like Christina Aguilera and showing her belly :P but something more tailored would be nice.)

PRINCESS Michael of Kent has got a group of prisoners to do her gardening for free.

She called for their help, unpaid, after seeing the award-winning garden they created at this week&#39;s Chelsea Flower Show.

The royal - dubbed Princess Pushy - had earlier told TV&#39;s Alan Titchmarsh she didn&#39;t have enough staff to do the weeding at home.

But after meeting Richard Booty, governor of Leyhill prison, Gloucs, she can now expect a visit from inmates to her nearby Nether Lypiatt estate.

They won gold for their woodland-themed garden, No Time To Stand And Stare, in the show garden category. It was inspired by William Henry Davies&#39; poem Leisure.

The prison previously won silver at Chelsea in 2001 and gold in 2000.

The princess&#39;s five-acre garden featured on BBC2&#39;s coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show. A royal aide said yesterday she wanted to show her support for the prisoners.

He said: "She went to the stand and spoke to the person in charge.

"She thought the garden was exceptional, unbelievably beautiful.

"It came up in the conversation that she would be interested in employing a number of prisoners to work on her garden. She also said she would be very willing, once they have left prison, to employ them on a more permanent basis."

The garden was designed by head of inmate activities Jeff Goundrill.

He said: "I am absolutely thrilled with this garden, both for the team at Chelsea and for the staff and prisoners at Leyhill who can&#39;t be here. This is the icing on the cake."

The garden includes wild and native plants, ranging from bluebells and wild garlic to cowslips, willow herb, rushes and grasses.

A footpath leads over an arched bridge which goes through the garden to a woodland walk.

Inmate Jez, 24, described the award as a "once in a lifetime achievement". He added: "It is a feeling like I have never felt before - it is absolutely incredible." While serving time, Jez has achieved an NVQ in bricklaying. A second qualification in machinery meant he was able to operate the digger which helped build the garden.

He plans to ditch a life of crime and stick to gardening. He said: "I definitely want to continue in this line of work, landscaping."

Leyhill open prison has 520 inmates coming to the end of their sentences. It runs a successful community placement project with inmates working in charity shops, private gardens and factories.

Last night, a spokesman for the Prison Service said placements were a "valuable tool" to help inmates get accustomed to being back in the community.

He said all prisoners had risk assessment over the possible danger they might pose, adding: "We feel these schemes make a valuable contribution to reducing re-offending by easing prisoners back into the community."

Phil Wheatley, director general of the Prison Service, last night praised the Leyhill team.

He said: "I am immensely proud of Jeff Goundrill, the prisoners and all at Leyhill who produced a garden of exceptional quality."

Enver Solomon, policy officer at the Prison Reform Trust, said: "This is a very positive thing - prisons should be about providing prisoners with opportunities."

Four years ago, Princess Michael was accused of bringing traffic to a standstill when she travelled to the flower show in a limousine with police outriders.

And Buckingham Palace recently "humiliated" the princess and her husband Prince Michael of Kent by giving them seven years to move out of their apartment at Kensington Palace.

They had previously been told the rent-free apartment, given by the Queen as a wedding present in 1978, would be theirs for life.

From The Mirror.

__________________
Jenna
You have your life, I have my life, you do your thing, I do my thing, I understand that you were not put on this earth to please me, just as I am not here to please you, but if we should meet, it would be a beautiful thing.

Princess Michael of Kent has spoken of her dismay that her son, Lord
Frederick Windsor, has been branded "a junkie" over his
experimentation with cocaine.

"He&#39;s down as a drug-user, but he&#39;s not," she said in a highly
personal interview. "You just have to watch him in action. Freddie
isn&#39;t a junkie."

Lord Frederick, 24, who has just finished four years at Oxford and is
now going to law school, publicly admitted using the drug after being
photographed leaving a party in a dishevelled state.

But his mother insists he resisted the temptation of drugs for years,
and that she had tried to emphasise the dangers of drug abuse to both
her son and her daughter, Lady Gabriella, 22, who is now studying at
Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

"I went through a lot of trouble with the drug thing because it&#39;s
every mother&#39;s worst fear," she said in an interview with Hello&#33;
magazine.

"So, just before he was due to go to Eton, when he was 12 or 13, I
took Freddie and Ella to a drug rehabilitation centre to see for
themselves.

"When we were there, what looked like an old woman came up and told
us, &#39;I&#39;m 17. I haven&#39;t got a tooth in my head. I have had two
children I&#39;ve never seen. Do you want to be like me?&#39;

"Both children were sick in the garden when we left, they were so
shocked." She then took them to Scotland Yard to see what drugs
looked like so they could recognise them. "Ella was freaked out, anti-
drugs - she&#39;s a health nut and eats raw vegetables.

"And Freddie was logically and academically anti-drugs and bored all
his friends to death in his first year at university about it. But
because he hadn&#39;t tried drugs he was teased for not knowing what he
was talking about.

"Finally he gave in and agreed to try it, but there were two boys who
heard and shopped him to the press.

"That&#39;s my son&#39;s drug record. That&#39;s their &#39;admitted drug user or
abuser&#39;," she said. "He asked me what to say when the press rang up
and I told him, &#39;Mea culpa. I tried it, I&#39;m sorry and I&#39;m never going
to try it again&#39;."

She said her son was "tough".

"He has got to know what it&#39;s all about and he&#39;s his own person. He&#39;s
very well in his own skin."

Princess Michael, who celebrates 25 years of marriage to Prince
Michael of Kent next month, also spoke of their shock that they will
be forced to leave the Kensington Palace apartment in which they have
lived, rent-free, since their marriage.

The Queen, who had agreed to let the couple remain there for life,
bowed to pressure from MPs earlier this year and told them they must
move in seven years&#39; time, during which she will pay the market rent
for the apartment, thought to be around £150,000 a year.

The couple said that when they inquired whether they would be able to
stay in Kensington Palace after the seven years if they managed to
find the rent, they were told no.

They will then have to move into their 17th-century Gloucestershire
manor house, Nether Lypiatt, which is thought to be valued at around
£3 million.

"Having been given the apartment for life, I assumed we would live
the rest of our days there," said the Princess. She added that they
had been planning to sell Nether Lypiatt for income, possibly to
their son.

"The big shock is that we&#39;ve lost our old age pension because we
can&#39;t do that any more," she said.

-----------------------------------------Personally, I think that Freddie has been the shining star in the Royal Family (education-wise): Honor Student at Eton, Oxford, now Law School...but this article is what I call classic denial :P

I read this in a 1988 issue of Royalty Magazine and thought it was interesting. So I will write it here.

On Sunday 17 April, Countess Marianne Rogala-Koczorowski, mother of Princess Michael of Kent, died in Australia in her 77th year. The Princess flew to Australia for the funeral after her mother&#39;s sudden and unexpected death.

Born in 1911, Countess Marianne was the daughter of Count Friedrich Szapary and his wife Princess Maria Hedwig zu Windisch-Gratz. On the death of her mother in 1918, the Countess Marianne inherited considerable estates in Czechoslovakia. In 1936, the year after the death of her father, she was one of the competitors in the Hungarian ski team in the Winter Olympic Games.

In 1941, the Countess Marianne, now aged 30--went through a form of marriage with the 47-year-old Baron Gunther von Reibnitz, an Austrian nobleman. In view of his Nazi associations that were revealed later, it is ironic that she had participated in anti-Nazi demonstrations, for which she was imprisoned in a concentration camp.

But she was released before the birth of her daughter, Marie-Christine, on January 15, 1945. On May 1, 1945, Baron von Reibnitz escaped from a Russian prisoner-of-war camp and traveled through Poland to join his family in Austria where the Countess also had estates.

In April 1947, a Bavarian De-Nazification Court classified von Reibnitz as a "lesser offender". He successfully appealed against the Court&#39;s decision and in May 1948, was pronounced to be a "follower" rather than a "supporter" of the Nazi regime.

But von Reibnitz now had to confess to Marianne, who had borne him a son as well as Marie-Christine, that he already had a wife and a daughter when he married her in 1941, and consequently their marriage was bigamous.

A sympathetic but firm cardinal assured the horrified Countess that as she had married von Reibnitz in good faith, their two children were legitimate in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church--but, of couse, marital relations must cease.

It was her equivocal position that determined the Countess-who already escaped from Communist Czechoslovakia with her children--to emigrate to Australia with them.

In Australia, she married a Polish nobleman Count Tadeusz Rogala-Koczorowski, who had been a diplomat before the war. Marie-Christine, after doing well at school and becoming a good tennis player and horsewoman, returned to Europe in August 1962. She came to Britain to study interior design in 1965.

On 15 September 1971 she married the merchant banker Thomas Troubridge, but the marriage was not successful. After it&#39;s dissolution and annulment, she married Prince Michael of Kent in Vienna in June 1978. Both her parents were present.

It is thought that the Countess Marianne never recovered from the exposure, in 1985, of her husband&#39;s Nazi past--he had died in 1983. Her death was sudden and unexpected and her daughter was not with her, but the Princess flew to Australia for the funeral. The Countess can take much of the credit for her daughter&#39;s success and, for Princess Michael, the loss will be irreperable.